Trisha Telep (ed)

by The Mammoth Book of Special Ops Romance (epub)

  He slipped deft fingers into his shirt pocket and withdrew a business card. “Take this.”

  As their fingers brushed, an electrical current tingled up her arm.

  “Keep my number close,” he instructed. “If you feel endangered in any way, at any time, I want you to call me,” he added encouragingly.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, wondering if he took this kind of care with all his clients.

  “I also need your number,” he reminded her, taking his cell phone off his hip. “So I can tell you what I’ve learned,” he added. His tone was steady, impersonal.

  He’s just doing his job, she decided, disappointed. She watched his deft fingers enter her number among his contacts. “Forty-eight hours,” he assured her, putting his phone away. His gaze returned to hers. “I promise you’ll hear from me then.”

  She dreaded the intervening hours when she would have to face Bruce and not betray her knowledge. With a heavy heart, she reached for her purse and stood. “Thank you,” she murmured, for pulling the wool from my eyes. Suddenly she saw Bruce Kimball in a whole new light, and the vision was both bewildering and scary.

  Todd trailed her to the door, reaching around her to push it open on to a balmy April afternoon. “Be careful,” he cautioned.

  She glanced up at him, snared by his midnight gaze. “You, too,” she answered, then looked away, chagrined. Why would he need to be careful? “Goodbye.” Beating a quick retreat, she headed to the parking lot.

  Sitting in her sun-warmed car, she lingered a moment, allowing tears of self-pity to brim in her eyes. Daren would be outraged to hear that Bruce had turned out to be a fraud. Herself, she was crushed. For a few brief months, she’d believed she had found the one. Only, this fairy tale had been written backwards. Her prince turned out to be a frog.

  Two

  Aside from the chilling fact that Bruce Kimball was living in a dead man’s shoes, he appeared, on the surface of things, to be an upstanding citizen. From his records at the DMV to his social security number, Bruce appeared perfectly legit. Only he hadn’t paid taxes since 2007, when he was buried in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. Who, then, was the Bruce Kimball impersonating him?

  Todd was determined to find that out before the forty-eight hours was up. He didn’t want to have to call Libby Granger without any answers. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to make a good impression on her.

  “So we dig a little deeper,” recommended Special Agent Belli, the FBI’s contribution to VeriSEAL. Todd and Belli had worked together in previous cases. But there’d never been a case as perplexing as this one. They’d been following paper trails since yesterday, hoping one of them led back to Kimball’s true identity.

  Their present effort had them standing in the rental office that leased Bruce Kimball’s condo – the property he’d listed as his address. “Here’s the lease agreement,” said the office lady, sliding it across her desk to conceal the fact that her fingers were shaking. Todd had sensed her nervousness from the moment Belli flashed his badge.

  Skimming the stapled pages, he noted, to his surprise, that there were two designated renters – Mark Earnest and Bruce Kimball. He flipped to the last page where both men had signed the lease. Bruce Kimball had a room-mate?

  “Could you identify both these men?” Todd asked the woman.

  Her right eyelid twitched. “Of course.”

  “In a line-up?” he pressed watching with interest as she blanched, glancing back and forth between them.

  “I don’t know that I’ve actually ever seen Mark Earnest,” she admitted. “Bruce Kimball didn’t have a rental history. Earnest did, so we used his.”

  “I see. We’ll take a copy of this,” Todd informed her, handing it back to be photocopied.

  “You wanna bet they’re one in the same?” Belli murmured as she moved away.

  On their way out of the office, Todd glanced at his watch. He couldn’t wait to talk to Libby Granger. But first he needed to follow his only lead and hope that it took him somewhere.

  Libby’s office door swung open without warning. Startled, she looked up from her monitor, dismayed to see Bruce filling the threshold, his posture defiant. Well, hello, liar.

  “Why haven’t you returned my calls?” he demanded irately. “I called you six times last night.”

  She had always admired his fashion sense but today the silver shirt and matching tie struck her as overblown. She found she preferred Commander Lawson’s rumpled look. “I’m sorry. Did you call?” she answered.

  He huffed his incredulity. “Of course I called. I always call. I wanted to tell you that the USS Monterey is pulling into port a week early. I saw it on the news last night.”

  “Really?” Well, that was good news. She was relieved to hear her brother would come home sooner than previously thought. She needed him now more than ever. “That’s wonderful.”

  “I knew you’d be happy to hear it,” he commented. A smile curled the edges of his mouth.

  “Yes, I am. Thank you.” She refocused her attention on her monitor, praying he would take her cue that she was busy and go away.

  Only he didn’t. He stood there watching her. “What are you doing?” he finally asked.

  “Writing my exams.”

  “Exams are two weeks out,” he said in a neutral voice.

  The voice made her nervous. He’d already sensed a change in her attitude. “Yes, well, I don’t want to have to do it when my brother gets back,” she hurriedly explained.

  Wariness spiked as he stepped into her office, moving around behind her. She searched her peripheral vision, wondering what he was doing – checking her work? Suddenly, her screen went dark and the computer hummed a descending scale. She realized Bruce had powered it off. “What did you do?” she protested. “I just lost my work.”

  Heavy hands settled on her shoulders. She flinched then cringed as he slid them lower to palm her breasts. His voice sounded seductively in her ear as leaned over, cloaking her in his scent. “All work and no play makes Libs a dull girl,” he canted. The sing-song voice sent a shudder up her spine.

  He spun her chair around abruptly and reached for her hands. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.” With a forcefulness she used to find intoxicating, he tried to pull her to her feet.

  “And go where?” She grabbed the arms of the chair, resisting.

  “On a road trip.”

  Her imagination shot into overdrive. “Why?”

  “To see your favourite lighthouse, silly,” he retorted. “I was going to surprise you but apparently I can’t keep a secret.”

  Oh, really? It took all of her will power to let the comment pass. “I never told you my favourite lighthouse,” she realized suddenly.

  He gave a dark chuckle. “You didn’t have to, Libs. I know you better than you know yourself.” His possessive gaze dropped to her neckline.

  She wondered if he could see her heart palpitating under her thin sweater.

  “Cape Hatteras is your favourite,” he announced.

  She mentally recoiled. How did he know that? Between her framed watercolours and the lighthouse figurines on her mantle, it could be any one of a dozen.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” He smiled like a Cheshire cat.

  “You’re always right,” she agreed, pretending admiration.

  “OK, so let’s go.” He gestured to the door.

  Libby glanced at the clock on her wall. Todd Lawson would be calling her cell this afternoon. She had spent the last two days thinking about him, recollecting the calm, low timbre of his voice. What would he advise her to do? To behave with Bruce as she always had? That meant behaving submissively, allowing him to whisk her anywhere his heart desired.

  “OK, fine,” she agreed, hiding her reluctance. “Let me get my purse.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Todd muttered, skimming the records he’d found in VeriSEAL’s archives.

  “What?” Belli prompted. They sat back to back in Todd’s miniscule office,
with Todd buried in his archives and Belli working on a laptop plugged into the FBI’s mainframe.

  “Mark Earnest was an active duty lieutenant in the US Navy.”

  “No shit,” Belli exclaimed.

  “There’s more. He enrolled in BUD/s in August of ’07. After the fourth week, he dropped upon request and was sent back to his assigned ship, the USS Monterey.”

  “Don’t tell me he was in the same BUD/s class as the real Bruce Kimball.”

  “Yes, he was. Class 232,” Todd confirmed. “Only Earnest rang the bell and Kimball graduated.” He drummed his fingers on the top of his desk. “I need to call Coronado,” he determined.

  Five minutes later, he ended a conversation with a Navy SEAL instructor. “We’re on to something,” he told his partner. He could feel the certainty building inside him, along with a rising uneasiness. “Kimball and Earnest were room-mates at BUD/s. According to their instructor, they even looked alike.”

  “So jealousy’s the motivation,” Belli deduced, scraping the silvery bristles on his five o’clock shadow. It was only 2 p.m.

  “He would have had access to Kimball’s belongings,” Todd continued, thinking out loud. “He must have stolen Kimball’s military ID, which he used later to impersonate him.”

  “Makes sense,” Belli agreed.

  “Yeah but there’s something else,” Todd intuited. “Something we’re not seeing.”

  They shared a long, thoughtful look. Then Todd glanced at his watch. His time was up. He owed Libby Granger a phone call, only he couldn’t bring himself to call her when he didn’t know the full story yet. “Follow his career path,” he instructed, swivelling back around. “What did he do after he dropped upon request?” Libby Granger deserved better than a shot in the dark.

  “Well, well,” Belli commented, fifteen minutes later, “would you look at this?”

  Todd swung around and squinted at the document on Belli’s screen. He realized he was looking at a DDG-214 – Mark Earnest’s military discharge papers.

  Belli pointed a beefy finger at a line near the top. “Check it out. He was dishonourably discharged from the navy.”

  The news yanked Todd’s scalp tight. “When was this?”

  “Ten months ago.”

  A month before Bruce Kimball had been interviewed by the college. “What’d he do to get kicked out?”

  Belli hit a button that forwarded him to another page. “He was court-martialled.”

  Worse and worse, thought Todd. “What for?”

  “Attacking a senior officer. Says here, ‘Lt Mark Earnest and Lt Cmdr Daren Granger engaged in a verbal altercation that later exploded into violence. Granger allegedly announced at muster that Earnest had returned to the ship from BUD/s, having dropped on request. Claiming he had been publically humiliated, Earnest attacked Granger with a steak knife while dining in the officers’ mess. Granger, who is skilled in hapkido, defended himself and stabbed Earnest in the shoulder. Earnest was court-martialled and discharged. Witnesses testified on Granger’s behalf and he was absolved of any wrongdoing.’”

  Granger. Todd felt suddenly like a trapdoor had opened up under his feet. Jesus. “Check to see if Granger is related to Elizabeth Granger,” he ordered, hoarsely. “I’ve got to make a phone call.”

  Libby’s cell phone chimed the theme song from Monty Python.

  Kicking herself for not turning it off, she kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, out the front window of Bruce’s Jeep, praying he couldn’t hear it, what with the top off the Jeep and the wind howling in their ears. He loved driving that way, making her hair slip from its knot and whip wildly around her face. But his sharp sidelong glance assured her he’d heard it, anyway.

  Feigning puzzlement, she dug in her purse and pulled out her phone. Sure enough, Todd Lawson was calling her. Adrenaline mixed with pleasure and burning curiosity goaded her to take the call, but she didn’t dare, not with Bruce listening in.

  “Who is it?” he demanded.

  “My brother,” she lied, naming the first male acquaintance to jump into her thoughts. “The ship must be close enough to shore for his cell to work.”

  That same enigmatic smile curled Bruce’s lips. “Go ahead,” he said. “Call him back.”

  “No, it’s too hard to talk when the top’s down,” she replied, stuffing her phone out of sight. “I’ll try him later.” Turning her face away, she pretended interest in the passing scenery.

  Two minutes later, Bruce exited the highway to find a gas station.

  Wind-chapped, with her hair in disarray, Libby slipped into the convenience store to return Lawson’s call. For privacy, she locked herself in the ladies’ room.

  He answered on the first ring. “Where are you?” he asked in the same deep voice she’d found so soothing, only this time it was tinged with urgency.

  “I’m with Bruce,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to go with him, but I thought he’d be suspicious if I didn’t.”

  “Go where?” Todd asked.

  “To the Cape Hatteras lighthouse.”

  A heavy pause followed. “Are you there now?”

  “No, we just left the college. We’re about to take the expressway off Interstate 64.” She stared wide-eyed at her wind-blown reflection. “Why? What did you find out?”

  “Listen, I want you to distance yourself from him.”

  His phone was breaking up. She wasn’t certain she had heard him right. “What did you say?”

  “His real name is Mark Earnest. He attempted SEAL training in 2007 but he dropped upon request after—” His voice cut off suddenly.

  “Are you still there?” she asked, reaching for the sink as the floor seemed to shift.

  “He went back into the regular navy, serving aboard the USS Monterey.” Todd’s voice came to her distinctly this time.

  “Monterey? That’s my brother’s ship,” she said with surprise.

  “Yes. Earnest worked with your brother.”

  “My brother knows Bruce – I mean, Mark?” The name change was confusing.

  “He’s been seeing you for the wrong reasons, Libby.”

  The words echoed unpleasantly in her mind. “What do you mean? What reasons?”

  “Just try to get— Call me back when you—”

  Frustrated that his voice was cutting in and out, Libby glanced at the bars on her phone. Maybe the problem was on her end. A sharp knock at the door startled her, and the phone clattered to the floor, its battery falling out. “Just a minute!” she called, scrambling to put it back together.

  “Hurry up, Libs. We don’t have all day.”

  It was Bruce – make that Mark. He sounded edgy.

  “I’m coming,” she called, her voice strained. She felt as if she were standing on shifting sands. Everything she’d assumed to be true about him had proven a total fabrication.

  With trembling fingers, she put her phone back together and dropped it in her purse. Exiting the bathroom, she stumbled headlong into Bruce – Mark – a man who’d supposedly worked alongside her brother yet had never admitted to it.

  “Something wrong?” he asked. With a lock of hair falling over one eye, he seemed so impossibly young and handsome. He was all veneer and no substance, she realized, a strange man with an even stranger agenda. Thank God she had learned all this before he could mess up her life any more than he already had.

  “I don’t know,” she said, thinking of Todd’s advice. “I’m not feeling too well. I think we should go back.”

  “After we’ve come this far?” he said incredulously. “Not likely.” And with the same determination he’d demonstrated in her office, he seized her elbow and marched her back outside to his Jeep.

  Libby cast an uncomfortable glance around them, but no one seemed to notice her reticence as Mark trundled her into his Jeep and took off.

  She figured she might as well get this road trip over with. The sooner they saw the lighthouse, the sooner he would take her home, the sooner she’d be done with him.

&
nbsp; “Can’t this Crown Victoria go any faster?” Todd complained, wiping his clammy palms on his jeans. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he’d started sweating bullets over Libby Granger’s safety.

  On cue, Belli floored it. They screamed down the interstate at ninety miles an hour, flashing blue lights to warn adjacent drivers. “What makes you so sure Mark Earnest wants vengeance?” Belli asked. “Maybe he just likes Granger’s sister.”

  “Right, so he tells her he’s a Navy SEAL,” Todd mocked. “Lie to the woman. She’ll never know the difference.”

  “Maybe he’s delusional,” Belli argued.

  “No. He knows exactly what he’s doing,” Todd refuted. “Everything he’s done to this point has been for a reason. He moved to the area, morphed into Bruce Kimball, and went to school near the sister of the man who ruined his career. He’s been circling her like a shark.” Closing in for the kill.

  Belli sent him a startled glance. “You got something for this girl?” he asked.

  Todd looked sharply out the window. Libby Granger’s eyes had reminded him of a pond, hidden in a still, deep wood. “Maybe,” he admitted, thinking he would love to explore those woods.

  “No shit,” the agent marvelled. “I thought you were a confirmed bachelor. What are you? Thirty-five? Thirty-six?”

  “Forty,” Todd said, shortly.

  “You look good,” Belli admitted, impressed.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t smoke and I work out. You should try it,” Todd retorted, toying with his cell phone. He redialled Libby’s number, but she didn’t answer.

  Fuck, he thought, his gut churning.

  Wasn’t this just the way of the world? He’d finally come across a woman he could fall in love with and a psychopath had already beat him to her.

  “Aw, shit, I forgot my camera,” Mark Earnest exclaimed at the base of the lighthouse. It loomed over them, jutting into the sky like a giant phallus. He liked the powerful statement that it made, like a big “fuck you”. Its bold barber stripes raped the soft blue sky. “I’ll be right back,” he promised, chucking Libs under the chin as he raced back to the Jeep.

  Of course, he’d left the camera on purpose, so he’d have an excuse to run back and check her cell phone. Not that it really mattered that her brother was calling her. There was no way in hell Daren Granger could ever guess who his sister’s boyfriend really was, not unless he saw a picture. He wouldn’t learn the truth till it was too late.